Adding a Superclass

You can add a superclass to a class in two ways: using the Superclasses pane or by drag-and-drop in the Class Relationship pane

Adding a Superclass in the Superclasses Pane

Note: If you cannot see the Superclasses Pane, your window may be too small. You can see the pane by enlarging your window or by dragging the slider bar at the bottom of the Class Relationship Pane. See Working With a Small Window for more information.

To add a superclass using the Superclasses pane:

  1. Select the subclass in the Class Relationship pane.
  2. Click the Add button in the Superclasses pane immediately below the Class Relationship pane. A Select Classes window will appear.
  3. Choose the additional superclass(es) you want from the Select Classes window. To highlight multiple classes, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking each class. To highlight a range of classes, click the first class, then hold down the Shift key and click the last class in the range.

Adding a Superclass Using Drag-and-Drop

To add a superclass using drag-and-drop in the Class Relationship pane:

  1. Select the subclass  in the Class Relationship pane.
  2. Hold down the mouse button and drag the subclass over the additional superclass. 
  3. Hold down the Ctrl key and release the mouse button to drop the subclass. The system will add the new superclass to the subclass. 

Note that if you do not hold down the Ctrl key when releasing the mouse, the operation is interpreted as Replacing a Superclass

If nothing happens when the class is dropped over a new superclass, the target class cannot be a superclass of the dragged class. For example, descendents of the dragged class are excluded.

Notes

Adding a superclass results in more than one superclass for a class, which then inherits the slots and facets of all of its superclasses. In the Class Relationship pane, a class with multiple superclasses is marked with and has multiple occurrences, one for each superclass. For example, the Columnist class in the Newspaper example has two occurrences in the Class Relationship pane: one with the superclass Author, and one with the superclass Person.

For information on replacing a superclass with a different superclass, see Replacing a Superclass.


Next: Jumping to Another Superclass

Classes Table of Contents